Friday, August 7, 2009

Cheese Buttons and Bike Riding

Our visit in Lietchtenstein has been great as usual with lots of relaxing, good riding, and too much giggling. Friday Shannon and I took a trip into town to check out the international beach volleyball tournament that is going on literally in the middle of downtown. It was pretty sweet. We also walked around the shops a bit. The downtown is very nice, but very small for a capital city!!

After our ride, we went out to a traditional restaurant where we got these things I'd guess you call cheese buttons. They were pretty much these chunks of fresh pasta dough briefly boiled and covered in a cheese sauce and served with fried onions and applesauce to put on it. I guess it is the Liechtenstein version of mac and cheese. It was good for the first few bites and then it got old, but the applesauce was fresh and amazing!

Today we had an easy morning with a long breakfast (cottage cheese and jam on bread is amazing) and then a good 2-hour ride with some friends of Stephanie and Philipp's with a couple of openers. After a snack, we did some shopping in downtown and I got myself a jacket as my Switzerland present to myself. We also watched a couple of women's games of beach volleyball in downtown before the rain came so we left. It was an enjoyable day and now its just time to get ready for tomorrow's race.

I've been feeling much better on the bike than I have in weeks, so I am delighted about that. The race tomorrow will be harder with the full squad from Cevelo and Bigla showing up. The course looks like it will be a lot like the Sunset Road Race course at Redlands with lots of climbing, descending, and cornering and pretty much no flat roads. I'm getting pumped up.